Insulation materials are conventionally placed in walls, ceilings, roofs, floors and other “wall structures” to thermally insulate a structure. The insulation material typically comprises fibrous blanket insulation, such as elongated blankets formed of fiberglass. The principle of the blanket insulation is to form dead air spaces that provide insulation against convection and conduction heat transfer. The blanket insulation can be formed in small “clumps” or particulate and can then be blown into spaces, such as into the attics of residential homes and other building structures. Blanket insulation can also be made into elongated blankets formed in a specific width and depth that is suitable for placement between parallel joists, studs, rafters, and other parallel support structures that are uniformly spaced apart. The elongated blanket, such as a fiberglass blanket, is cut to the desired length at the job site for placement between the parallel structures. Also, a sheet of facing material usually is applied to one broad surface of the blanket, with the facing material having overhanging edges extending beyond the sides of the blanket to form “tabs” that can be applied by the installer to studs, joists, etc. of the building structure to hold the blanket in place.
In commercial or industrial settings, such as in box stores with expansive drop ceilings, insulation for preventing overhead heat loss is often missing or severely lacking, namely due to the expense and difficulty of installing insulation within the expansive space. To gain greater energy efficiency, it is desirable to retrofit these ceilings with insulation, but doing so is often a time consuming and tedious job. For example, conventionally, these types of ceilings would be insulated using rigid foam board insulation that is cut to fit between rafters. Then, optionally, clumped insulation can be blown in above the rigid foam board insulation to increase the thermal efficiency of the insulation. The costs of installing such a system may be prohibitively high, due to the labor and time needed for installation. This prohibitive cost is especially true for structures with many wires, pipes, and ventilation conduits which are positioned above a drop ceiling—which a substantial majority of commercial and industrial buildings have. During installation, the rigid foam board insulation must be fitted around each structure, which requires significant cutting of the board insulation.
Furthermore, even when a conventional installation system is put in place, there still exists significant air flow through the cracks, gaps, and joints between the board insulation and the rafters. All of these spaces allow the flow of air between the spaces below the ceiling and the spaces above the ceiling, which allows cool air-conditioned air to leak out of the structure in the hot parts of the year and heated air to leak out of the structure in the colder parts of the year. The result is high inefficiencies in heating or cooling large buildings.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.